One Step towards an Improved Theory of Metaphor: Reply to Maloney on Bellert's Paper

Abstract

I am glad that paper on metaphor prompted Professor Maloney to write another paper with critical comments and suggestions concerning proposal. I will answer his critique point by point. 1. According to Professor Maloney, Bellert's claim that metaphorical expressions cannot be captured by a recursive definition may be true, but her argument certainly does not establish it. [...] After all, it seems as if the very production and understanding of literal language is creative, and yet linguists now think that this is compatible with a generative grammar for conventional language. There are two things to be said here. First, obviously I have not proved the impossibility of establishing a generative grammar or an algorithm for enumerating all sentences including metaphorical ones and only those (that is, those which would be accepted by competent speakers or literary men [?] as genuine metaphors). I only said that this seems theoretically infeasible, as there can be no recipe for creativity in the sense of the term I am concerned with. In other words, in contradistinction to a generative grammar of literal, conventional language accounting for creativity of every competent speaker, which I consider feasible (and which is being worked on by a number of modern linguists), a generative grammar which would account for creativity in the other sense of the term (i.e., creativity which clearly differs from speaker to speaker) seems to me infeasible. But anyone who wants to argue to the contrary is free to do sothe burden of the proof is not concern. Analogically, Popper, whom I quoted in original article (p. 27) never proved that there is no such method: my view of the matter [. ...] is that there is no logical method of having new ideas (my italics). Whoever believes there is one, is invited to propose such a method. However, what I do think is important in this respect is to distinguish the term creativity in its more usual sense, the one with which I am concerned here, from the more technical sense used in modern linguistics. Maloney's remark quoted above indicates that he does not make this distinction. The production and understanding of literal language is indeed creative, but Maloney adds linguistics now think it is compatible with generative grammar. Of course, generative grammar is compatible with creativity, but only in the linguistic sense of the term. Maloney is thus arguing that a generative grammar can account for creativity in the non-Chomskyan sense, but he employs in this very argument the term creativity which can only be understood in the Chomskyan sense. What linguists now think is that generative grammar is compatible with creativity in Chomsky's sense of the term. And although I agree with this, it has no bearing on the issue of creativity in the other sense of the term.